Busting the Myth on Overworking and Under Healing

By Ryan SabinDec 10, 2016Dec 20, 2017

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Busting the Myth on Overworking and Under Healingwww.runnerclick.com

In my book over training is a myth alright, especially compared to under healing .Let me explain why. What may seem over training to someone is more likely to be a regular workout to someone else. You could never overwork yourself and the only problem in this case is that you always under heal. In which case, if you don’t heal properly and give your body ample time to rest, you will inevitably feel like you’ve over-trained.

What is Over-Training?

Over training is the result of giving you body more work or stress that it can handle. Over training is considered one of the most taboo topics for both coaches and trainers. It may seem like it’s a huge case since there was a survey where 61% of serious runners experience overworking at least once in their career, this may cause severe Under Performance Syndrome (UPS). When in reality why not find ways to heal yourself to a point where you are good to go again.

Ways to heal yourself properly

Keep a Training Diary

Many of the runners do not have a diary or a journal to keep track of their training and it’s very essential in order to increase your healing rate so that your performance will improve. Start of by not training for a week to reset your neurological and endocrine system that need significant repair and restoration. Besides this, cut all the intense workout, one of these is the anaerobic training. This will increase the heart rate and propel the anaerobic system a lot more. Once the week is done, get a book to record these few things:

Training volume

Distance

Time

Weight

Resting heart

Sleep volume

Work Volume

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Nutrition

When it comes to running, your diet can’t make you, but it can break you. So it is not so much there is a “best” but there are several “okay” diets. By far the main issue that runners have is not with specific foods but the amount of food in general. It is easy to be out of control and eat too much food. On the other hand, when restricting, it is easy to restrict too much and end up tired.

As far as diet composition, it doesn’t make much of a difference as long as there are foods that you tolerate and you don’t have insulin resistance issues. Almost all elite runners will have a massively carb-heavy diet, but at the recreational/average level there are those who are successful on LCHF/keto/paleo type approaches as well. And in ultra-running, which is a different sport entirely, there even seems to be an advantage of a low carbohydrate diet, either due to a metabolic efficiency or simply due to fueling and digestion being easier. Having ideas like this gets you prepared for the runs you are training for and keep your body in check to prevent any form hindrance while you train and take part in competitions.

Sleep and relaxation

We generally need at least 7-8 hours of sleep a day but not runners, they need an extra few hours to let their body recover to the very best conditions. Consistent sleep volumes and schedules plays a vital role as well but and involuntary sleep disturbance or loss of sleep quality will lead to several problems resulting an imbalance of training. There are few ways to go about this. For example, avoid sleep medication as it disturbs the sleep requirement and hinders your running patterns. You’ll also want to reduce alcohol and caffeine, because both will affect your sleeping pattern and be a hindrance while running as you may experience a shortness of breath. Many people run towards running to escape from stress but what happens when running itself becomes a stress? Active relaxation helps to hold on to the hyperactive sympathetic system and restores the parasympathetic system. Here are a few techniques of active relaxation.

Autogenic training: This will engage the mind and body in deep relaxation, reversing the stress response. The results are spontaneous, often subtle, psychological and physiological changes.

Imagery: All the senses are made to conjure a relaxing scene. This feeling invokes a sense of deep relaxation. It is usually used by professional sportsmen/sportswoman.

Meditation and massage: Both causes relaxation and a sense of easiness to the mind and body.